


No Place I'd Rather Be

by verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Again, F/M, Fluff and Light Angst, Snuggling at Becca's mansion, bed sharing, finally getting that drink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 14:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10788591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: “Do you want to come in?” Clarke asks, lingering outside her door. It’s late, although Murphy and Emori are still up, their voices drifting up from the kitchen, Murphy’s tone sardonic and playful, Emori’s low and inviting. Bellamy’s got hollows under his eyes, as deep as Clarke’s are, but she knows that sleep’s likely to evade both of them tonight. Bellamy’s eyes flicker and Clarke hears her words suddenly and her stomach drops.“Not- sorry... “ she says quickly, hating herself. “Do you want to come in and talk?”A tension releases in Bellamy’s shoulders. “Yeah,” he says, voice graveled. “Yeah, I do.”





	No Place I'd Rather Be

**Author's Note:**

> Just a fluffy, kind of lightly angsty, bedsharing ficlet. Set on the eve before the end of the world. This is honestly so tame for me I had trouble tagging it.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated.

She has some pretty terrible timing.

Forgiving Wells, sleeping with Finn, admitting she loved Lexa, all perfectly at the wrong moment. It shouldn’t surprise her that her trend continues, but then again, Bellamy has terrible timing too. They’re a pair, if they’re anything.

“Do you want to come in?” Clarke asks, lingering outside her door. It’s late, although Murphy and Emori are still up, their voices drifting up from the kitchen, Murphy’s tone sardonic and playful, Emori’s low and inviting. Bellamy’s got hollows under his eyes, as deep as Clarke’s are, but she knows that sleep’s likely to evade both of them tonight. Bellamy’s eyes flicker and Clarke hears her words suddenly and her stomach drops. “Not- sorry... “ she says quickly, hating herself. “Do you want to come in and talk?”

A tension releases in Bellamy’s shoulders. “Yeah,” he says, voice graveled. “Yeah, I do.”

Clarke nods, once, and turns to open her door. Her lights flicker on, the fireplace leaps to life. Bellamy stops dead behind her in the doorway, and Clarke gets it, somehow she’s still adjusting to it too. She can’t imagine what this room is like to Bellamy, after six months of roughing it in tarp tents and crashed space stations, cold metal cages and damp prison cells… he never even got the dangerous comfort of Mount Weather. It’s almost cruel, for them to spend their last night on earth here, but, therein is the irony of their timing.

Clarke gives him a minute, kicks off her shoes and shrugs out of her jacket, folds it carefully and places it over the back of the chair. When she looks back at Bellamy, he’s watching her through the mirrored wall, and when she meets his eyes and smiles, he gives himself a little shake and drops down into a crouch in front of the fire. His hands half lift like he’s going to warm them, and then with clear embarrassment, he drops them. The habit is obsolete here.

“Took me a minute too,” Clarke offers and Bellamy hums.

“Somehow it’s weirder than the showers,” Bellamy says, standing back up and turning towards Clarke. “To think, this was all right here while we were fifty miles away and rubbing sticks together to make fire.”

“Hey, imagine trying to ration all this out in the beginning.”

Bellamy does chuckle at that. “Ration? Princess, I would have fought you tooth and nail for this room. Probably would have won too.”

Clarke feels the corners of her mouth quirk up at the nickname, so rare now, but somehow warming her in the way Bellamy says it, self aware and newly affectionate. “You probably would have. Then again, ALIE would’ve chipped us all right away, so you wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it very long.”

“Won’t get to anyway,” Bellamy says and looks down, trying to keep her from seeing his grimace. “Look at us,” he says after a moment. “World’s really ending and here we are.”

“We’re still alive,” Clarke says. “We’ve still got some time. I…” her words fail her suddenly, feeling trite, but Bellamy’s looking at her and Clarke turns to the table and the decanter she’d brought up earlier. “Want a drink?” she manages.

She can’t look at Bellamy but she hears the absence of his breath for a moment and then the long, slow release of it.

“Think we’ve finally earned it?” Bellamy asks, going for light but missing the mark almost laughably. Clarke looks up at him. “Sorry,” Bellamy says shaking his head, pushing off the wall to come join her.

“Hey, don’t,” Clarke says. “You don’t need to apologize. I’d say we’re overdue.” She pours the amber liquor out into the crystal tumblers and offers one of them to Bellamy. The tumbler is small and fat and Bellamy’s fingers brush Clarke’s as she hands it to him, but she doesn’t try at all to avoid it, they’re past rationing physical touch. They’ve been so careful, both of them, since they teetered on that edge of something that night in Kane’s office. She’s missed him, she realizes now, almost desperately: the comfort of his physicality, his openness and support that she’s always found in the squeeze of his hand on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her, his hand in her own.

It would have been too much though, to know that was there for her and limit herself. Still, it seems silly now. Bellamy meets her eyes and Clarke smiles a little helplessly at him. She picks up her own glass and clinks it against his own.

“What are we toasting?” Bellamy asks, clearing his throat.

“I don’t know,” Clarke admits.

“Me neither.” The knock back their shots in silence and Clarke winces. “Oh come on,” Bellamy teases her, catching her expression. “When’s the last time you had anything this good?”

“Hundred year old scotch? Can’t say it’s my favorite,” she laughs but tops them both up. “Sit with me?”

“‘Course.”

There’s not much room on the chaise lounge, but it seems too formal to sit facing each other across the table and they’re both ignoring the bed, so the couch it is. Clarke curls up in the corner of it, drawing her knees up to her chest and Bellamy sits down carefully next to her. They sip their scotch this time, glancing up at one another and smiling at little from time to time. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but Clarke thinks neither of them really knows where to start; they’ve never been given this amount of time before.

“I’m glad,” Clarke finally manages to say, the sentiment feeling heavy in her mouth. “That I get to spend tonight with you.”

Bellamy glances at her out of the corner of his eye, chuckles. “We’ve come a long way.”

“I feel like we’re supposed to talk about good memories,” Clarke rambles a little, picking at sleeves of her shirt. It’s a little odd to wear something that isn’t threadbare. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do at the end of the world? Reminisce and realize we don’t have any regrets?”

“In a perfect world,” Bellamy agrees, taking another sip of his scotch. “But I don’t think either of us could claim that.”

It might have hurt at one point, but it’s just a relief. Bellamy knows her so well, after all, there’s no need to put on a brave face with him, hasn’t been for a long time. Clarke sneaks her toes out across the slim distance between them and nudges them against Bellamy’s thigh. He looks down and a flicker of surprise crosses his face before he smiles behind his glass and drops a hand to cover her bare foot, gives her a squeeze.

“I’ve got a few good memories though,” he says, after a moment. “That’s worth something, I guess.”

“What are they?” Clarke asks, leaning forward into her knees and resting her glass on the top of her other foot.

“Watching Octavia take step onto the ground off the drop ship,” Bellamy starts. “Watching you learn how to shoot a gun. Kissing Gina for the first time…” he trails off for a moment, and then. “Finding you in that cave… I think that’s probably the happiest I’ve been on Earth.”

“Really?” Clarke asks, a little skeptically. “You got the shit kicked out of you ten seconds later.”

“Well yeah, when you put it like that,” Bellamy drawls, but squeezes her foot again. “No, but… Gina was alive, and Lincoln. We were at peace and Octavia hadn’t told me she wanted to leave yet. I never thought I was going to see you again, and then there you were. For all that you looked like a drowned kitten.”

“Hey,” she objects. Bellamy gives her another sidelong glance and there’s a quirk of his mouth, a ghost of smile there that suddenly makes Clarke snort, and then they’re both laughing helplessly, a little hysterically.

“I can’t believe,” Clarke gasps through her laughter, “you’re mocking how I looked when I was kidnapped.”

“You looked like shit,” Bellamy sniggers. “Like absolute shit.” Somehow it just makes Clarke laugh harder. She’s never laughed with Bellamy before, and that failed rescue, far from funny at the time, now seems like one of the most ridiculous things to have ever happened to them.

“What about you?” Clarke protests as she manages to get her laughter under control. “Azgeda gear and hood. I thought you were coming to kill me.”

“Yeah, well,” Bellamy says, catching his breath and taking another sip of Scotch. “It wasn’t the most thought out plan. Shit moment, on my part, too, to realize.”

“Realize what?” Clarke asks twitching her toes under his hand. Bellamy smiles, maybe a little ruefull.

“That I loved you.”

She knows. Or she’s figured it’s true, since she’s been sitting on her own feelings for that long, if not longer. It’s hard to remember a time when part of her wasn’t in love with Bellamy Blake, but there’s something about the nonchalant, easy way he says it that takes Clarke’s breath away. He doesn’t say it with any particular weight, doesn’t it seem to expect a response or an affirmation of her feelings for him. He just says it and takes a sip of his near empty glass to give her time to process that. Clarke reaches out and closes her hand over his wrist, words failing her.

“What are your good memories?” he asks her, easily changing the subject.

“Um.” Clarke takes a unsteady sip of Scotch to give herself time to regroup. “The early days weren’t so bad. Finn took me swimming once, and when he and I slept together. That was nice before it wasn’t. The bunker,” she says with a smile and Bellamy nods. “Our Unity Day celebration at the drop ship, before we went to meet with Anya.”

“Oh yeah,” Bellamy says with a smile, scratching at his chin awkwardly with the hand he’s still holding his glass in. He hasn’t picked his other hand up off her foot. “The first time you had fun in your life.”

“Jesus,” Clarke giggles into her knees. “Anything else you’d like to make fun of me for while we’re here?”

“How much time do you have?”

“I _was_ going to say,” Clarke tsks, and Bellamy just grins at her. “I liked talking to you that night.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Made me feel, I don’t know. Like things were normal for a minute, flirting with you.”

“Huh,” Bellamy says, and somehow that’s what makes him flustered. “Well, to normalcy then.”

He lifts his glass and Clarke knocks hers against it. “May we have it again after tonight.”

They drain what’s left of their glasses and Clarke tries hard not to let the fact that this might be their last quiet moment together sink in. She likes this, this ease with Bellamy, their guards down because there are no more games to play, no more races to run. It would be easy to berate herself over lost time, but she doesn’t think they could have had this before now. The end of the world is it’s own blessing as much as it’s a curse.

“You want another?” Bellamy asks, nodding at her glass.

“I think I’m good,” Clarke says, leaning to put her glass on the table. “Do you?”

“Not if you don’t.” Bellamy puts his tumbler on the table as well and leans back into the couch, lets his head fall back for a moment and closes his eyes. “It’s late, huh?”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, heart contracting. “Please don’t leave.”

Bellamy’s hand tightens on her foot and he rolls his head to look at her. He considers her and smiles faintly. “Want me to sleep on the couch?”

“In this room?” Clarke snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. The bed’s huge.”

Bellamy turns to look at the bed and makes a disbelieving noise. “Bigger than any bed I’ve ever seen.”

“Come on,” Clarke says, pushing herself up. When her foot slides out from under Bellamy’s hand it feels cold. “I’ve got a private bathroom attached, if you need it.”

“Of course you do,” Bellamy says, rolling his eyes. He gets up and excuses himself to it. Clarke uses his absence to kick off her leggings and change into a sleep shirt. The material is slippery and soft and if there’s ever a time to indulge in something comfy, this is the time. She pulls out a large men’s t-shirt for Bellamy, hesitates when she sees the striped boxers and then grabs them as well and knocks on the door of the bathroom.

“If you want this,” she says when he opens it. Bellamy smiles and takes the clothes without comment.

He comes back into the room when Clarke’s dimmed the lights and crawled under the covers. She’s close to drifting off but Bellamy’s soft footsteps and the mattress dipping on the other side of the bed rouses her.

“Hey,” she whispers and slides a hand out to find him. She just wants to touch him.

“Bed’s too comfortable to fall asleep in,” Bellamy whispers back and it makes Clarke snort.

“Yeah, talk to me in five minutes about that.” There’s a rustling as Bellamy adjusts, rolling on this side and her hand brushes over his stomach before his hand finds her hand and encloses it in his own. 

“You falling asleep?” Bellamy asks softly and Clarke hums a little.

“Not yet.” She tugs gently on his hand and Bellamy shifts closer across the bed. She strokes her thumb along his knuckles. “And I’ve got about five minutes of you being awake.”

“You got longer than that,” Bellamy protests. She laughs at him, in the faint moonlight creeping in through the window, and he smiles back, somehow at once boyish and painfully handsome. It catches Clarke by surprise and she feels once again the magnitude of how surreal this is.

If she shut out the rest of the world, she could pretend she was in one of those early, turn of the century films they used to show during teen night at Alpha station, and that she and Bellamy had never rallied a group of eighty-odd kids to fight an army, never wiped out an entire civilization, weren’t facing the second nuclear apocalypse tomorrow. She can’t say all that though with any hope of coherency so she just smiles at Bellamy a little desperately and clings to his hand.

“It’s okay,” Bellamy says, because he always seems to know what she’s thinking. “Don’t think about it too much.” He tugs on her hand this time and Clarke closes the distance between them, lets him wrap an arm over her back and buries her face into his shoulder, right where it meets his neck. Bellamy slides his hand up to cup the back her head, tangling his fingers in her hair and Clarke refuses to cry, not now.

“You know I do, too,” Clarke says after a moment. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know,” Bellamy assures her. “Don’t worry, I know.” His hand tightens in her hair and Clarke shifts back so she can look at him. This would be the moment where he kisses her, or she kisses him; where they take advantage of the biggest bed either of them has ever been in, the guaranteed privacy and unthreatened hours. But they’re both so tired, she can’t image they could do much more than getting Bellamy inside her, and even that seems like a feat.

Instead she just pulls Bellamy’s free hand to her hip and lets him nudge up her shirt a little, slides her arm around his side and breathes him in. Bellamy strokes at her hip with his thumb, shifting his hand so he can feel the gentle curve of her belly.

“What?” Clarke whispers at Bellamy’s chuckle.

“You’re just so soft,” Bellamy says, sounding a little surprised and not quite meeting her eyes. “I, uh, I like it.” It hurts but she also gets it. Bellamy stands so tall in her mind, so steadfast and sure, at times she’s forgotten he isn’t made of marble. She’s seen his cracks, felt his tears on her neck and cheek, felt the tremble of his hand when he’d held hers, but somehow she still forgets that Bellamy is made of flesh, just like she is. She reaches out and carefully pushes his hair off his forehead.

“So are you,” she says and watches Bellamy’s eyes flutter. She trails her fingers over his cheekbones, down the ridge of his nose, ghosts them over the bow of his lips and fits her thumb into the dimple of his chin. Bellamy closes his eyes and takes a slow measured breath, let’s Clarke touch him as he smoothes a hand up her side, feeling the curve of her hip, the swoop of her ribcage.

There is a peace that comes from touching, a quiessence that coaxes Clarke’s mind from the horror of their world. More than sleeping with Finn, more than retreating into Lexa’s affections, Bellamy’s touch soothes everything else. He fits his hand around the nape of her neck and his thumb strokes the line of her jaw.

“Whether we make it tomorrow or not,” Bellamy husks at her. “I’m glad I’ll be with you.”

“Me too,” Clarke whispers. “No one else I’d choose.”

Bellamy does kiss her then. It’s just a soft press of mouths, gentle and unassuming, a kiss hello, a kiss goodbye, a kiss of maybe. Clarke kisses him back just as gently, and they don’t speak anymore. She drifts off to the sound of his even, deep breaths, and when she dreams, it’s not of primefaya and death, but the woods at the dropship, lush and green and promising.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the read!


End file.
